Parsippany apartment complex sues township over trash disposal rules

PARSIPPANY--An apartment complex is suing Parsippany in a dispute over the township’s garbage collection rules.

The Baldwin Manor complex wants the township to pick up trash from the complex’s Dumpsters -- not from smaller garbage cans as required.

“We don’t believe it’s a healthful thing for our tenants or a healthful thing for the environment,” Baldwin Manor attorney Howard Spialter said yesterday of the use of garbage cans.

Greg Schneider, Parsippany’s public works director, could not be immediately reached for comment.

For more than a dozen years, Baldwin Manor has hired a private waste hauling company to empty the 13 Dumpsters on its 11-acre Baldwin Road property.
Waste removal costs, however, have become a burden for the 238-unit complex, Spialter said.

Parsippany is willing to pick up trash from the complex, he said, but only if Baldwin Manor uses the garbage cans. That condition is what the apartment complex is challenging.

Baldwin Manor is resisting the trash cans because of a “nightmare” experience in the early-to-mid 1990s with the township’s trash hauling rules, Spialter said.

The complex used the cans for about two years but quit after they created a messy and dangerous situation, according to the lawsuit, filed May 28 in Superior Court in Morristown.

Baldwin Manor employees on each garbage day moved several hundred trash cans to Baldwin Road for the haulers, the suit states.

And not all tenants used the cans, Spialter said, as many garbage bags were left along the street and were later raided by animals.

Loose trash clogged drains during storms, according to the lawsuit, and garbage collection frequently caused traffic back-ups on Baldwin Road.

“It was a horrendous debacle,” Spialter said.

Spialter said the township is obligated to collect garbage from apartments. so Parsippany should unload waste from the Dumpsters or provide some compensation for the costs of hiring a private company to do it.

Baldwin Manor typically pays roughly $30,000 a year for waste removal, he said.
Parsippany attorney John Inglesino declined to comment yesterday because the township had not yet seen the lawsuit.